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Monday, August 24, 2009

What's This Michi's Ladder All About?


My facebook friend Lori posted the above question to BeachBody's nutritionist, Steve Edwards. Here is his response: 

Some people have noted how Michi's Ladder has changed over the years and wondered why. The answer is that it will continually change as we learn more about nutrition and experience more with our customers. Thoughts and science on nutrition are continually changing. We'll never rest on our laurels.

That said, Michi's reflects what has worked for us with our customers more than the latest nutritional science. Not that it's scientifically un-sound. It's just based more on our experience with you than what the latest studies may indicate. So we'll only make changes to it once they've been tested.

That stated, here are a few things to consider about Michi:

First, it's just a food substitution guide for people trying to LOSE WEIGHT. Depending upon your situation you may find it necessary to eat more on a lower tier, especially for athletics. Performance nutrition is different from weight loss nutrition. For performance, dense calories are often important. For weight loss, they almost always want to be avoided. So Michi's focuses on low-density foods from a caloric standpoint that have a high density nutrient ratio. Therefore, tier 1 is filled with many veggies, which are loaded with nutrients per calorie as well as no calorie fiber. For people trying to fill their stomachs with as many nutrients and as few calories as possible, this is the primary aim of your diet.

Secondly, it's not a diet! A diet consists of an eating plan. You still need to adhere to some sort of plan. You could eat out of nothing but tier 1 and still have a poor diet if you don't cover your basic nutritional needs, such as getting plenty of carbs, proteins, and fats. Michi's Ladder was never meant to address this. All it was designed for was to help you make substitutions of similar types of foods.

Three, sometimes we make mistakes. Some versions of Michi's have had mistakes. If something sounds wrong (like, for example, beef jerky being labeled a carb) chances are it is. We will catch these, for sure, but they happen. Please let us know if something seems wrong with the ladder and use your own common sense while using it.

The latest version of Michi’s will launch any day. This, more than any other, is organized to reflect our diet plans. We’ve eliminated many restaurant items from the list and tried to keep it to many grocery store items. Some convenience store items are still found, as well as nostalgic tier 5 favorites, like Lobster Newburg.

We’ve eliminated these because we’re working on a restaurant version of the ladder. Hopefully we’ll have this out very soon.

To view the actual post, copy and paste to your browser if you are a BeachBody community member:

http://teambeachbody.com/connect/message-boards/-/message_boards/message/32763229/connect/message-boards/-/message_boards/category/19535509

Here is the link to the "old" version of Michi's ladder: 

updated version (you must be a community member to view):

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